<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Before we go more, I was just thinking about the things you were saying about your brother. And it sounds like he would volunteer... he had a very valuable skill -- his, his electrical knowledge. By doing so, did he get, was he able to, you know, get special favors from the administration, things. Or did he get more influence as to how things were done because of things like that?

HM: No, no. One of the reasons why he volunteered for the advance crew was he thought that he would be able to put our family in a better physical location, rather than what we were faced with in Puyallup, and that was one of his reasons. But that was beyond his control and they put us in Block 19 which was a perimeter block outside of the main area so most of the people that we knew lived in Blocks 6, 7, 8 and 12, somewhere around there. And we were right on the fringe of this area, and most of the people that were in Block 19 were people from Puyallup, Sumner, Fife, somewhere in that area.

TI: In that, in that, and by doing so. Was this sort of a continuation. Earlier you mentioned how because of your father's sort of prominence in the community they tried to isolate him, and his family.

HM: This was a practice of the WCCA and the WRA both. They were trying to place people in areas that they were not familiar with, and so that they would not be able to organize. This was a common practice that the WRA followed.

TI: Mhmm. And so in this case it was probably a similar thing that that's why they put in Block 19 out on the perimeter.

HM: Yeah, unfortunately. It was not the block that I wanted to live in, frankly.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.